I bought this HP Mini 210 from a friend a while back and didn't do much with it. After thinking, I thought I wanted to use this as a backup computer for running untested software, opening USB drives, and general things I wouldn't want to do on my computer that can't run on a virtual machine. The mechanism that the laptop uses for powering on is a 4-pin switch that was so flimsy, that the plastic lever broke just from trying to turn it on.

So I was going to try and figure out how the switch works and then solder on a new switch.

... Unfortunately, I ripped out the solder pads of the switch, so I was left with trying to figure out which points I needed to connect to boot. I tried looking at just the PCB itself and checking with a voltmeter on what is connected to what. I didn't get anywhere with that.

I then found the link for the schematics of the board ...I had no idea what I was looking at and was so clueless about where to start.

I had found this page that included the diagram for the power switch.

I wasn't confident that I understood the connections properly, just based on the schematics. So I started to scrape the board to reveal the copper connections underneath to help me better understand it.

After scraping away a good chunk, I found some copper contacts and then randomly connected two points, and it worked. The laptop booted.

I decided it was better to not try to solder a new switch and will from now on just use a jumper wire to connect the two points.